Could you go 'download only'?

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **Winckle** » Mon May 25, 2009 7:49 pm

I played Portal at 7AM before school on the day of release 8-)

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **That** » Mon May 25, 2009 7:49 pm

Winckle wrote:I played Portal at 7AM before school on the day of release

But Mark, you could have saved so much time by going to the shops!

Oh.

Raze · PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **Raze** » Mon May 25, 2009 8:06 pm

Winckle wrote:I played Portal at 7AM before school on the day of release

I remember me and JaZman getting proper psyched to play HL2 the morning it unlocked. I stayed up till 8 am when it was ready, played a bit, then went to bed safe in the knowledge I had an awesome day of gaming waiting for me. 8-)

I could go download only. Steam is brilliant, I've not bought a disc based PC game in years.

no

Karlprof wrote::lol: You're pathetic, and you've lost, and you know it.

Stop posting, MCN.

What has he lost? this is a debate, and he is voicing his opinions.

Contary to all you and your "followers" posts, yes internet speeds are going to get quicker, it's Ohlms law (spelling) and eventually download distribution will get bigger, it is inevitable, but to believe it will replace digital media is a bit absurd. Even in 10-15 years time when most of the uk will be covered by fibre optic lines and we will be able to get uber speeds, it still will not deminish the need for physical items.

Look at cd's, sure the download market is thriving, and has been for what 8 years? but cd's are still being manufactured and sold in the high street. Costing wise it doesn't pay for the consumer to go download only, as such a service may only be provided by a few companies, i.e. for Pc, Steam, Direct from developers and some other companies, there will be no real room for competition nor will price bargaining take place.

You may have your steam service, but it may be many a year before "download only" can become a reality.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **Shadow** » Mon May 25, 2009 10:17 pm

Talking about file sizes it's worth remembering that compression tech will get a lot better in the future too, that's why PS2 launch games can be the same file size as current Xbox 360 titles.

And MGS was nowhere near 50GB, it could have fitted on a DVD if they hadn't purposely tried to emphasise how importance of Blu-Ray.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **That** » Mon May 25, 2009 10:18 pm

JiggerJay wrote:What has he lost? this is a debate, and he is voicing his opinions.

He's had each and every one of his points debunked to the point that they're frankly indefensible.

JiggerJay wrote:Contary to all you and your "followers" posts

Ah yes, the reason people are agreeing with me is because I'm so popular and everyone loves me.

JiggerJay wrote:yes internet speeds are going to get quicker, it's Ohlms law (spelling)

No, Ohm's Law connects current, voltage and resistance in a circuit. You're thinking of Moore's Law.

JiggerJay wrote:Look at cd's, sure the download market is thriving, and has been for what 8 years? but cd's are still being manufactured and sold in the high street.

You're right, though I would say it's only been for the last year or so that legally digitally downloading music has really taken off, and it's already having a huge impact:

Arstechnica wrote:This quarter, 81.5 million CDs will be sold. While that's down 20 percent from the same period last year, digital singles sold by the likes of Apple's iTunes store grew 54 percent, to account for 175 million songs sold. In other words, the quantity of downloaded songs far outweighs the quantity of CDs sold as a whole.

JiggerJay wrote:Costing wise it doesn't pay for the consumer to go download only, as such a service may only be provided by a few companies, i.e. for Pc, Steam, Direct from developers and some other companies, there will be no real room for competition nor will price bargaining take place.

http://store.steampowered.com/
http://www.direct2drive.com/
http://eastore.ea.com/
http://www.gamersgate.com/
http://www.playgreenhouse.com/

These are but some of the online game download shops that have found success recently, and you can usually get copies straight from the developer's website as well. That's a fair chunk of competition, I'd say. In fact, you could almost say that the internet makes it easier for competition to exist because of the lower overhead involved in business startup online. Just throwing it out there.

JiggerJay wrote:You may have your steam service, but it may be many a year before "download only" can become a reality.

Quite the contrary, sir - for me, and for many others, it's already a reality. When consoles catch up will perhaps be another matter, but since the potential for increased profit margins for the people who count - the developers, publishers and console manufacturers - is so great, I can't see it being more than a couple of console generations before downloading is the primary - perhaps not only, but primary - source of getting your games. Admittedly, a couple of console generations could be 10 years, but that says perhaps more about the console industry than it does the technology or even the viewpoint of the businesses involved. I'm sure Steam and the other PC game download sites will experience huge growth and become a primary distributor of PC games long before those 2 console generations are up.

Some good points there Karl, although 81.5 million cd's does equate to more than 175 million songs, i.e. taking a rough average track listing for a cd wieghed up against an individual song! I am not trying to say that download distribution won't be a reality, I just don't believe that it will be the sole supplier of games.

A point not touched on with music vs games is that core games tends to appeal to the younger crowd exclusively, whereas it tends to be older people who still buy CDs. Saying that, I collect 7"s but that's far from the norm.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **Stig** » Mon May 25, 2009 10:37 pm

Karlprof wrote:
JiggerJay wrote:and the internet becoming bottlenecked

No, the internet isn't becoming 'bottlenecked'. No, it won't ever become 'bottlenecked', and there was never in its history any danger of it becoming 'bottlenecked'.

This is why:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC64_VI#SPARC64_VIIIfx - Octocore parallel-processing monsters like this new SPARC64 will be available to ISPs soon, bringing added stability and power to their mega-routers, meaning they can support more customers downloading more data simultaneously.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/158614 - 2TB internal hard drives have hit the ~£200 level for consumers. There was a time, not so long ago, when 200GB drives cost similar amounts. What does that tell you about the capacity for storing data, both on the consumer and the server side? What seemed impossible to archive a mere few years ago barely makes a scratch on these new drives.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category_7_cable - 100Gb Ethernet means that your ISP will soon be able to process 100 gigabits of data per second on a single cable. This is a vast improvement on old 10Gb Ethernet technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication#Last_mile - Fibre optic lines can now be run all the way from your service provider to your home - let us not forget that outdated last-mile wiring is one of the main reasons for limits on internet speeds.

The relationship between the size of the content on the internet that users want to access and the speeds they can access it at is symbiotic. Back when people first started sharing photos on the net in the '90s, so-called 'analysts' cried "the internet infrastructure won't take much more of this!" Then when Flash became common-place, they wailed, "the internet is bottlenecking!" And now when movie and game downloading is becoming more and more accessable, the same ignorant fools are shouting their tripe about an internet apocalypse. Don't believe them - they're making the classic MCN mistake of assuming that technology doesn't grow with users' needs. It does. That's the point of technology.

Peace out.

Thanks for posting what I was going to post, saving me considerable time! :mrgreen:

The Internet is one of the most scalable networks out there.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **That** » Mon May 25, 2009 10:40 pm

JiggerJay wrote:Some good points there Karl, although 81.5 million cd's does equate to more than 175 million songs, i.e. taking a rough average track listing for a cd wieghed up against an individual song!

Oh aye, definitely. I think it's a fantastic example of the start that downloadable content has had, though. It's only going to get more popular!

JiggerJay wrote:I am not trying to say that download distribution won't be a reality, I just don't believe that it will be the sole supplier of games.

That's probably a fair shout. I think we should probably talk about primary distribution methods, as even today there are some very quirky ways of getting games which a minority of people happily use; wasn't there a scheme in Japan that let you take a thumb drive into a shop and pay to have a game put on it? Where does that fit in our spectrum of distribution? :lol:

Luckily it's fairly moot, as I can't see that ever properly taking off.

Winckle wrote:A point not touched on with music vs games is that core games tends to appeal to the younger crowd exclusively, whereas it tends to be older people who still buy CDs. Saying that, I collect 7"s but that's far from the norm.

Cough, look at the current core Nintendo crowd at the minute! it's like everyone and their dog.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **SEP** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:00 pm

So now we've gone from the original premise, which as stated in the thread title was Download only, to simply having downloads as the primary distribution method, with other options? I'm all for the options, as they cater for those people who, for whatever reason, cannot get a decent enough internet connection. I can see a future where console games can be either bought on disc and installed to the console's hard drive (in a similar fashion to the current Xbox 360 system), or downloaded. That way, people have the option, there is still marketplace competition (which there wouldn't be if MS stayed with their walled garden approach), and the retailers would be appeased.

And if thumb drives and memory cards continue to grow in capacity it could very well be viable to use a kiosk-style system, too.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **That** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:08 pm

MCN wrote:So now we've gone from the original premise, which as stated in the thread title was Download only, to simply having downloads as the primary distribution method, with other options?

Hey, man, what can I say. I'm exploring possibilities. You know, for gooseberry fools and giggles and all that. For the record, though, there's no reason it couldn't go completely download only, and I'm perfectly willing to debate on that pretense, as I did for several pages.

MCN wrote:I'm all for the options blah blah blah

We know.

MCN wrote:That way, people have the option, there is still marketplace competition

http://store.steampowered.com/
http://www.direct2drive.com/
http://eastore.ea.com/
http://www.gamersgate.com/
http://www.playgreenhouse.com/
direct publisher downloads

MCN wrote:And if thumb drives and memory cards continue to grow in capacity it could very well be viable to use a kiosk-style system, too.

I can't see it working, but this is probably the best counter-point you've made all day, so I'll go along with it: I'd say that even with the prevelence of very large thumb drives, people will prefer the hypothetically lower prices of the online store (less hardware, wages, and shop rent involved), and the done-in-the-background nature of downloads. Again, going to a shop with a thumb drive, while a better solution than discs in plastic boxes, is still somewhat invasive. A lot - not all, but a lot - of the arguments against discs apply to kiosks as well, as you're only changing the thing you go and collect, and not any of the roots of the system.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **SEP** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:20 pm

Karlprof wrote:
MCN wrote:That way, people have the option, there is still marketplace competition

http://store.steampowered.com/
http://www.direct2drive.com/
http://eastore.ea.com/
http://www.gamersgate.com/
http://www.playgreenhouse.com/
direct publisher downloads

Yes. For PC. However, MS and Sony seem to be taking a very "Walled Garden" approach to their online distribution systems, MS especially. Unless that completely changes, then the choice is lost.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **That** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:22 pm

MCN wrote:Yes. For PC. However, MS and Sony seem to be taking a very "Walled Garden" approach to their online distribution systems, MS especially. Unless that completely changes, then the choice is lost.

Except you still have cross-system choice. If MS start charging £80 per game, you can bet your life the majority of people will go across to the Sony console on which games only cost £30. Or move away from consoles altogether and get games for £20 on Steam ...

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **SEP** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:25 pm

Karlprof wrote:
MCN wrote:Yes. For PC. However, MS and Sony seem to be taking a very "Walled Garden" approach to their online distribution systems, MS especially. Unless that completely changes, then the choice is lost.

Except you still have cross-system choice. If MS start charging £80 per game, you can bet your life the majority of people will go across to the Sony console on which games only cost £30. Or move away from consoles altogether and get games for £20 on Steam ...

But if MS start charging £80 for a big system exclusive, say Halo 6, then people who want to play that game are forced to pat that price.

PostRe: Could you go 'download only'? by **That** » Mon May 25, 2009 11:26 pm

MCN wrote:But if MS start charging £80 for a big system exclusive, say Halo 6, then people who want to play that game are forced to pat that price.

And then they'll see severely decreased sales. Market forces have a way of keeping this sort of thing in check.

Microsoft could already put a charge of £70 on the shops, who would then all have to mark up the price to £80, competition be damned. They don't, because they know that no-one's going to buy an £80 game, no matter how much of a big system exclusive it is. Market forces.

EDIT: Reworded for clarity.

I think we can all now agree that DVD games will still be available for some time to come even if they are not the prime method of distribution. Most people will be download only in 5 to 10 years but not everyone and a large enough market will exist for physical media to make it worthwhile.

Could you go 'download only'?

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